








The 

White 

Comrade 

% 

ROBERT 

HAVEN 
SCHAUFFLER 











* 




Class P'J Qv^ O 7 
Book_. dj. <^ W^ 



rniyrigTit-N" / ^ <3. lO 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr. 



THE WHITE COMRADE 
AND OTHER POEMS 



The White Comrade 

And Other Poems 



By Robert Haven Schauffler 

Author of "Scum o' the Earth, and Other Poems," etc. 




Boston and New York 

Houghton Mij03in Company 

(Ct)e Biberj^ibe pce# Camliritige 

1920 






COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ROBERT HAVKN SCHAUFFLER 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



/.s^ 



NOV -I 1920 



OICI.A601262 



TO 
MARGARET WIDDEMER SCHAUFFLER 



FOREWORD 

The courtesy of the following publications, in which 
have appeared poems included in this volume, is grate- 
fully acknowledged : The Atlantic Monthly, The Century, 
The Outlook, Collier's, Contemporary Verse, The Touch- 
stone, The Youth's Companion, The Smart Set, The 
Plattsburger, The American Poetry Magazine, The 
Stratford Journal, The Lyric, The New York Evening 
Sun, and The Boston Evening Transcript. 

The idea of the title poem was suggested by an anony- 
mous clipping, which was long afterwards traced to 
"The Comrade in White," written on the western 
front by W. H. Leatham. 

The poem called "To Sleep" is the first result of a 
search for more flexibility in the sonnet form. I had 
long wondered why the more rapid and elastic triple 
beat might not be as well suited to the sonnet as the 
conventional double beat. Experiment showed that 
this triple beat, by adding too many syllables, made 
the time-honored five-stress fine unwieldy. But it de- 

[ vii ] 



FOREWORD 

veloped that a four-stress line in triple beat averaged 
nearly the same number of syllables (ranging from eight 
to twelve) as the immemorial iambic pentameter. A 
sonnet in this triple beat, four-stress measure, how- 
ever, will seem considerably shorter than one in the 
Petrarchan measure, because the triple beat induces a 
more rapid reading tempo. 

R. H. S. 



CONTENTS 

I. BETWEEN TWO SHORES 

The White Comrade 3 

The Supreme Gift 7 

Worship 8 

The Harmonies of Heaven 9 

Divers 10 

The Broken Window 11 

The Wonderful Hour 17 

The Broken Globe 19 

A Soul Remembers 20 

n. MAGIC CASEMENTS 

Hidden Treasure 23 

To Browning, the Music Master 25 

Interlude 28 

A Spell for Listeners 30 

From the Spire of Milan Cathedral 31 

The Shadow of Aspiration 33 

Words and Music 34 

To the Paint-Brush Poets 35 

The Tryst 36 

Hurdy-Gurdy 39 

[ix] 



CONTENTS 

Over-tones 41 
The Silent Singers (with Margaret Widdemer Schauffler) 43 

III. CONFLICT 

Worlds at War 47 

Earth's Easter (mcmxvi) 53 
Meuse-Argonne Lyrics 

I. Fear of Fear 54 

II. Best o' Luck 65 

III. The Look in Their Eyes , 56 

IV. Delirium? 57 
V. Hit 58 

The Day of a Thousand Deaths 63 

Before the Deluge 65 

The Crucible 66 

IV. OTHER POEMS 

Paradise Revised 81 

Limbs of the Forest 85 
For the Guest-Book of "The Cabin," Sutton's Island 86 

Happy Marriage 88 

To Sleep 89 

Acknowledgment 91 



I 

BETWEEN TWO SHORES 



THE WHITE COMRADE 

Under our curtain of fire, 

Over the clotted clods. 

We charged, to be withered, to reel 

And despairingly wheel 

When the signal bade us retire 

From the terrible odds. 

As we ebbed with the battle-tide. 

Fingers of red-hot steel 

Suddenly closed on my side. 

I fell, and began to pray. 

I crawled on my hands and lay 

Where a shallow crater yawned wide; 

Then, — I swooned. . . . 

When I woke it still was day. 
Fierce was the pain of my wound; 
Yet I saw it was death to stir, 
For fifty paces away 

[3] 



THE WHITE COMRADE 

Their trenches were. 

In torture I prayed for the dark 

And the stealthy step of my friend 

Who, staunch to the very end, 

Would creep to the danger-zone 

And offer his life as a mark 

To save my own. 

Night fell. I heard his tread, — 
Not stealthy, but firm and serene, 
As if my comrade's head 
Were lifted far from that scene 
Of passion and pain and dread; 
As if my comrade's heart 
In carnage had no part; 
As if my comrade's feet 
Were set on some radiant street 
Such as no darkness could haunt; 
As if my comrade's eyes 
No deluge of flame could surprise, 
No death and destruction daunt. 
No red-beaked bird dismay, 
Nor sight of decay. 
[4] 



THE WHITE COMRADE 

Then, in the bursting shells' dim light, 

I saw he was clad in white. 

For a moment I thought that I saw the smock 

Of some shepherd in search of his flock. 

Alert were the enemy, too, 

And their bullets flew 

Straight at a mark no bullet could fail; 

For the seeker was tall and his robe was bright; 

But he did not flee nor quail. 

Instead, with unhurrying stride, 

He came, 

Still as the white star low in the west. 

And gathering my tall frame, 

Like a child to his breast. ... 

Again I slept; — and awoke 
From a blissful dream 
In a cave by a stream. 
My silent comrade had bound my side. 
No pain now was mine, but a wish that I spoke, — 
A mastering wish to serve this man 
Who had ventured through hell my doom to revoke. 
As only the truest of comrades can. 

[5] 



THE WHITE COMRADE 

I begged him to tell me how best I might aid him, 

And urgently prayed him 

Never to leave me, whatever betide; 

When I saw he was hurt — 

Shot through the hands that were clasped in prayer! 

Then, as the dark drops gathered there 

And fell in the dirt. 

The wounds of my friend 

Seemed to me such as no man might bear; 

Those bullet-holes in the patient hands 

Seemed to transcend 

All horrors that ever these war-drenched lands 

Had known or would know till the mad world's end. 

Then suddenly I was aware 

That his feet had been wounded, too. 

And dimming the white of his side 

A dull stain grew. 

**You are hurt, White Comrade!" I cried. 

Already his words I foreknew: 

** These are old wounds,'' said he, 

** But of late they have troubled me,* 



THE SUPREME GIFT 

You brought and gave the infinite 
To me who had despaired of it; 
Beloved, how shall I express 
The fervor of my thankfulness? 

For love is higher than my sight 

And deeper than my ken; 

For love is as a final light 

To long endungeoned men; 

Such rapture as if there should come 

A gush of song to lips long dumb; 

The sound of far celestial mirth 

To those whose ears were sealed on earth. 



[7] 



WORSHIP 

{To Margaret) 

Of late this was the loftiest word I knew 
To tell my worship of your body's grace, 
Your eyes where love and laughter interlace 

And where the gorgeous mind comes flashing through; 

My worship when the soul's transcendent hue, 
Through irised windows, turns your lovelier face 
Shrine-like into the God-head's dwelHng place: — 

"Next to my love for God is mine for you." 

Thus yesterday; but now, since your white hand 
Has led me upward to the promised land 

Of this world's highest heaven, from this world's 
hell. 
Through ways more dazzling than my sight may 
stand, — 
Dearest, I love you more than prayer can tell, — 
He were a saint who loved his God so well. 

[8] 



THE HARMONIES OF HEAVEN 

Let me but hear the harmonies of Heaven, — 

Straightway Hfe grows more free and large and wise. 

The loaf of earth is leavened with a leaven 
That lifts the brutish mass nearer the skies; 

Straightway my power is as the power of seven, — 
Such potency within that music lies. 

All that the venturer for art's rare booty 

Dreams at the height of his most dizzy dream; 

All that the seer, on his lone vigil's duty. 
Recaptures from the glories of the gleam, — 

Appear, against that harmony's broad beauty, 

Soiled wreaths of spume on some bright ocean-stream. 

Grant me to keep the pulse of that far singing, 
O Thou who marshalest the choiring throng; 

Leave ever in my soul the mellow ringing 
Of timeless harmony, serene and strong. 

That time may bear me on broad pinions winging 
To where these songless lips are touched with song. 

[9] 



DIVERS 

Clad in thick mail he stumbles down the floor 
Of the dark primeval ocean; — on his head 
A casque more gross than ever helmeted 

Crusader against Saracen. Before 

His glass-dimmed eyes dart shapes like fiends of yore, 
Or like malignant spirits of the dead, 
To snatch and snap the line where through is fed 

A meager air to that strange visitor. 

Stumbling we grope and stifle here below 
In the gross garb of this too cumbering flesh. 

And draw such hard- won breaths as may be drawn, 

Until, perchance with pearls, we rise and go 
To doff our diver's mail and taste the fresh. 
The generous winds of the eternal dawn. 



[ 10] 



THE BROKEN WINDOW 

In my ignorant days, in my witless years, 

I peeped at life through a window of fears 

That distorted the world like an ill-wrought pane 

Clouded with bubbles and flawed in grain; — 

Such glass as had warped for my childhood's eyes 

The work-a-day street when the dusk came down 

On the smoke-drenched town. 

Where I watched through the window, in awed surprise. 

The dog turn dragon, the corner post 

Writhe to the shape of a headless ghost. 

My best-loved comrade's parting breath 
Haunted my ears as, alone with death, 
I gazed with dread, through my window of fears, 
Down the stair-like descent of my ageing years. 
And I was aware that shapes of despair 
Lurked for me there on each grim stair. 
With coals to banish from out these eyes 
Faces and books and the red dawn's rise; 

[11] 



THE BROKEN WINDOW 

With poniards ground fine to pierce the ears 
That had caught the pulse of the choiring spheres; 
With a rack whereon they would bind me to lie 
Powerless, half human, unable to die 
Till the stair should crumble away for my fall 
To the jaws of the bottomless pit under all. 

With frantic eyes I sought egress; 

My spirit thirsted for nothingness; 

But suddenly, as I faced despair. 

My best-loved comrade was with me there. 

He met each test of my skeptic wit 

With glad assurance, and conquered it. 

"Comrade," he breathed, "fright holds you now; 
There is dread in your eyes and damp on your brow. 
You have peeped through a clouded window of fears; 
Gaze now at life with a sight that enspheres 
All the woes of earth, as they verily are. 
With the life of the soul in the outermost star. 
Look through my eyes!" 

I looked, and lo ! — 
With a crash like the splash of the cursed 

[12 J 



THE BROKEN_WINDOW 

Who should plunge in a crystalline pool, 

Healing, delicious and cool. 

To slake an unbearable thirst — 

My window of fears was burst 

By the force of an unseen blow; 

And, lo! 

The long, dark stairway of human woe 

No more than a fleck of soot, became. 

Brushed from the wick of a primal flame. 

For his heel to spurn who has newly trod 

Through dusk to a great dawn lit by the same, 

When his feet shall spring on the flower-starred sod 

Of the uplands of vision and power. 

With no term set to beatitude's hour. 

Then I knew that the death of a well-loved friend. 
Or the death of this well-loved frame. 
In very truth became 
No bottomless pit of flame, — 
No ignominious end, — 
No death; — 

But the first, long, shuddering breath 
That the new man draws, whose frame 

[13] 



THE BROKEN WINDOW 

Escapes from its black duress 

To the breast of a mother's tenderness, — 

To the kiss of the wind 

And the magic of mind, 

And the myriad beauties to which he was bhnd. 

Then I knew why Jeanne d'Arc sang as the fire 

Crackled below her martyr's pyre; 

For her window of fears, accursed, — 

Her clouded pane, had burst; 

And still, as the world went dark, 

That searing vision could see 

Earth as one cooling spark 

From a sun of eternity. 

Nay, even the sight of a world at strife. 
Blasted and horror-torn, 
Seen now, from the height of the endless life, 
Appeared as the blood-drenched morn 
Of a cosmic savior's birth. 
Who should open the eyes of the sphere 
To visions more radiant and clear. 
More thrilling and wonder- worth : — 
[ 14 ] 



THE BROKEN WINDOW 

To the wisdom, the beauty, the laughter 
Of the fairest ways of the here 
And the all-transcending hereafter. 

My brow grew serene. 

My vision, keen. 

Now I saw that nothing may harm that man 

Who carries the torch of his soul. 

As only the constant can, 

Unquenched to its ultimate goal. 

Now I knew that my comrade, at last, I knew. 

And my soul could envision him through and through. 

Swifter than fear I flashed through space. 

And communed with the Infinite face to face. 

• .......•• 

I homed to the sphere of the slow-grinding hours. 

To the travail, the terror, the pain 

Of humanity's dim-eyed reign. 

I put off my Heavenly powers; 

Yet did I carry with me 

Sight that forever shall see 

Whatever things mortal there be 

From the height of eternity. 

[15] 



THE BROKEN WINDOW 

And ever there ring in my ear 
The tones of a high command : 

*^ Be strong to raise thy hand 

To the windows whence mortals peer 

Palsied by terror, insane. 

Strike with thy might and main! 

Let in my air again! 

Drive forth the phantom, fear! 

Shatter the clouded pane!'' 



THE WONDERFUL HOUR 

I RAMBLED alone in the marsh; 
The clouds hung forbidding and harsh; 
The ruts of the mean road bristled below 
Their tatters of slushy snow. 
Ebbing trickles of salt creek spread 
Sad, colorless, dull as lead. 
The brightness had fallen from the grass, 
And the sparkle had flown from the bay; 
No beauty nor cheer were left, alas! 
Trusty nature had failed me to-day; 
Her heartening word remained unspoken; 
I thought her inviolate tryst was broken. 

Suddenly dawned the wonderful hour. 
My gate swung wide for the only good; 
My hands reached forth for the only food; 
I drank deep breaths of the primal power, 
And the tides of my being began to glow 
Like westerly surf when the sun is low. 
[17] 



THE WONDERFUL HOUR 

My casements flew open that I might see 

The magic, the worth and the mystery 

Of runnel and sedge and gaunt-limbed tree. 

From my work-a-day wrappings of murky cloud 

I burst, as a man who should wake in his shroud 

Might burst through the ring of the sorrowing crowd. 

My plod grew buoyant, my vision, keen; 

The slush was glossed with a silver sheen. 

Though the swords of the sun could not slash through, 

Each puddle was dreaming of turquoise blue. 

Transmuted to amber the wet ruts lay. 

And the mean marsh road was a royal way. 



THE BROKEN GLOBE 

When they had broken our Dorothy's globe, — 

The battered old ball of green and blue 
That she loved so well; when the hot tears gushed 
And her poor little heart seemed broken, too, 
We took the child to a fairy play. 
And wonder enchanted her grief away. 

O, God, if they shatter this globe we love 

And spurn it aside as a ruined toy, — 
Shall we crouch and whimper disconsolate, 
Bewailing our vanished hour of joy? — 
Or, hand in Thy hand at eternity's play. 
Forget the disasters of yesterday? 



[19] 



A SOUL REMEMBERS 

Once, in my moment of Earth, 
Before the immortal rebirth, 
I looked on my flesh as a thing 
Like to the house of a king, — 
Beautiful, worthy' to stand 
Proud on the heavenly strand. 

I remember it now as a clod 
Prone in the gardens of God, 
Mean, without honor or beauty. 
Justified but by the duty 
Of spending its pittance of power 
In rearing a heavenly flower. 



[20] 



II 

MAGIC CASEMENTS 



HIDDEN TREASURE 

{For George Gray Barnard's Cloisters on Washington Heights, New York City) 

Embedded deep in the unlovely walls 
Of hovel and enclosure, pen and byre, 
These lovely shards of the old abbey halls 
And towers lay hidden : — 
Statue and plinth and subtly planed lunette, 
Rare capital, incomparable tomb, — 
Concealed like sapphires caked in mire. 
Or pearls shell-ridden. 

Forgot they lay, oblivious of their doom, 
While generations, star-like, rose and set, — 
More like us men, perhaps, than we know yet, 
Who, in a whorl of worlds whose vision chokes 

the breath, 
Drowse on through time, mistaking life for death. 

Then came a man with vision to divine 
The treasures in the wall. 

[ 23 ] 



HIDDEN TREASURE 

He drew them forth and built of them a shrine 

Where all 

Might play their destined part, 

And each long-hidden shard of loveliness 

Express, 

With individual art, 

The myriad oneness that is beauty's heart. 

Now what great hand shall delve into the wall 
That crusts our mortal frame's immortal mind, 
And rear therefrom a shrine our God may call 
The temple of mankind? 



TO BROWNING, THE MUSIC MASTER 

Oh, I once was a lad 

Of a single thought. 

Melody-mad, 

With ears for nought 

But the miracles Bach and Beethoven wrought. 

When suddenly you. 

Out of the blue. 

With your formal old master Galuppi, dropped. 

And grim-eyed Hugues 

Of the mountainous fugues, 

And the rampired walls of the marvelous Abt, — 

To build me, from Music's far-off strand, 

A way to a humaner, dearer shore — 

A bridge to poetry-land. 

Then to my soul I swore: 
"If poets may win such store 
Of music's own highland air, 

[25] 



TO BROWNING, THE MUSIC MASTER 

Yet abide in the common round, 
Transmuting man's dusty ground 
To gems for the world to wear — 
Theirs too is a priceless art, — 
Is a thing that I fain would share — 
A thing that is near to my heart!" 

Thus were a young souFsears unstopped 

By Galuppi and Hugues and the marvelous Abt, 

Who bridged a way for ignorant feet 

And parted wide for wondering eyes 

The port of a second paradi^ ^; 

Showing how right it is, and meet 

That a Schubert's voice may never repeat. 

With the self-same thought and the self-same beat, 

Measures a Milton's lips have dropped; — 

That music waxes where poesy wanes. 

And, with thirsty lips to poesy's veins. 

Grows by her want, by her wasting, gains. 

For music, the protean, is this, and this : 
The rainbow shimmer of love's first bliss, 

[ 26 ] 



TO BROWNING, THE MUSIC MASTER 

A despairing gesture, a dream-like whim, 
The down on the plumes of the Cherubim, 
The body of Ariel, lissom and fresh — 
Too subtle for poesy's golden mesh — 
An exquisite, evanescent shape 
That " breaks through language " to escape 
To the bourne of that country, brighter, vaster, 
Where now you are singing, dear Music Master. 



INTERLUDE 

In the brown, cheerless land of Brain, 
As I sat scribbling rhymes in vain 

And dumbly sought to sing my dream, 
The pencil slipped into a stream 

Whose lyric voice unheeded rose 
Antiphonally to my prose. 

Long did I follow down the shore 
This graphic guide, that evermore 

Wrote on the rocks its fluent story 
Or danced with eddies, dilatory, 

Until it led me where the stream 
Grew lovelier than my brightest dream, 

With irised falls and pavement stones 
Glazed in a myriad liquid tones 
[28 ] 



INTERLUDE 

Rarer than day's triumphal dome 

Is hung with when Lord Sun turns home. 

For very joy I had to sing. . . . 
The pencil ceased from voyaging. 



A SPELL FOR LISTENERS 

When music sounds, fling wide the spirit's door 
And hearken what the heavenly choirs can do 
To reinforce Earth's halting art for you, 

And with their notes round out its barren score. 

Then gloriously upon the ear shall pour 

The larger song, while the old strain you knew 
Drones like a child's toy pipe, scarce piercing through 

Chords vaster than Niagara's primal roar. 

No power of Bach's or Palestrina's pen 

Ever may fully body forth to men 

What music through his soul's wide portal throngs; — 
Such blessedness unto no man belongs! 

And our mortality may sound again 

Mere shattered fragments of the song of songs. 



I 30 ] 



FROM THE SPIRE OF MILAN 
CATHEDRAL 

Shrouded in grey 

The city lay, 

And the fog and the gargoyles were friends that 

day 
When high in the spire I took my stand, 
And scanned 
The dull panorama for signs of fabled Switzerland. 

Lashes of vapor veiled the sun-god's glance. 
Thick as doubt and grey as ignorance. 
But — suddenly — 
Apollo shook his bright head free; 
And now there glowed, in a world new-born, 
Monte Rosa and Matterhorn, 
And now haze-curtains of saffron and rose, — 
Turning their prose 
To poetry — 

From Viso and Bernard and Blanc were torn. 

[31 ] 



FROM THE SPIRE OF MILAN CATHEDRAL 

And I thought how the mists of my morning had melted 

away 
When maturity looked with the eyes of the day. 
And I pondered what ultimate ranges the noon might 

disclose, 
That still remained shrouded in grey. 



THE SHADOW OF ASPIRATION 

My summit calls. Its floors are shod 
With rainbows laughing up to God. 

But oh, the jagged ways and bleak 
That give upon that lonely peak! 



[ 33 ] 



WORDS AND MUSIC 

Poems are dewberries picked in a dream; 
Music bedecks them with sugar and cream. 
The result is a succulent savor, — 
But where is the dewberry flavor? 



[34 ] 



TO THE PAINT-BRUSH POETS 

Although you may loudly protest 

That the poet should write with a palette 
Or hammer his pen with a mallet, — 
Chisel and brush are best 

For faithfully showing the look 
Of a man or a beast or a brook. 

Are you cramped by the poet's own themes? 
His boundaries are wide as the ocean: 
The surge of great passions in motion, 
Thought's lightning, the white surf of dreams, 
Why shun them, for novelty's look, 
To splash in an alien brook? 



[35] 



THE TRYST 

'Long about dusk I 'd see him go 

Almost a-runnin' through the snow 

Bound for the marsh, like a feller who 's late 

Meetin' some girl, you know, — keepin' a "date." 

"Jest like them dudes," thinks I, "to roam 

With girls in the marsh, and their wives to home!" 

So, one fine day, I on with my hood 

And follered his tracks to the edge o' the wood 

Where the marsh begins, to see who it was 

Meetin' my neighbor's man, — because 

I liked Mis' Joyce, — and she oughter know 

O' the goin's-on out there in the snow! 

Well, what do you s'pose I saw? — Instead er 
A girl, there wa'n't nothin' but common salt meader. 
And him on the bridge pacin' up and down 
Watchin' the grasses float and drown 
In the flood o' the tide, and the cakes of ice 
Swim up westward. He looked so nice, 

[36] 



THE TRYST 

And pleased and content, it seemed like he 
Was findin' himself rare company; 
And never once did he turn his head 
From the west, to look for a skirt instead. 

I sneaked back home by the pasture lane. 
And studied and puzzled and addled my brain 
To guess why he hurried so, only to stand 
And gape at the west with his hat in his hand. 

Next mornin' says I to my neighbor: "Say, 
Why does your man alius hurry that way 
Past my house, the end of the day?" 
Says she: "To look at the sunset, dear, 
Out where there's nothing to interfere." 
Says I: "Now ain't you city folks queer! 
What's in a sunset for to see?" 
"Look for yourself, my dear," says she. 

So, late that day, I thought for to look 
Out o' the winder near where I cook. 
The sky was a nice red birthday cake 
Spattered with candles. 

[37] 



THE TRYST 

Mercy's sake! 
I dropped the cutter; I dropped the dough, 
I stood there gapin' outdoors as though 
One o' them fairy tales was true, 
And I was a princess with nothin' to do 
But watch a girl sewin' with silver thread 
On pink satin curtains to hang 'round my bed. 

I hurried across and opened the door; 

Never seed nothin' so purty afore! 

Then, under my eyes, things turned to a dome 

O' melting gold, like a honey-comb. 

Some bee must 'a' come from that fairy hive 

And stung me, and made me feel all alive. . . . 

Funny what tricks yer eyes will play 

If any one happens to show 'em the way ! 



HURDY-GURDY 

" Harmony belongs exclusively to the most civilized nations of modern times." ^ 

Grove's Dictionary of Music 

Mean you strike on our ears with the tin-pan yawp of 
your treble, 

Mean with the blat of your bass, your vulgar, monoto- 
nous droning. 

Otherwise, far, had you struck the fresher ears of the 
ancients. 

Sons of the age of gold, the children of Pericles' Athens, 

Ranged in their theater intent while the pipes played 
the notes of the Ajax, 

Harmonyless and thin, skirling the barren Greek music 

As country lads pipe in the Spring crudely on whistles 
of willow. 

How had they started and stared as the wealth of your 

harmonies neared them, 
Crowded and craned for a glimpse, oblivious now of the 

Ajax, — 

[ 39 ] 



HURDY-GURDY 

Trooped from the benches to meet this marvel the gods 

had invented, — 
Eyed it with such surprise as if the moon's sickle of 

silver 
Abruptly had burst into flames of purple and orange 

and scarlet. 
How each actor had stripped the mask from his face to 

see better, 
While Athens bowed in the dust to worship this wonder 

of wonders! 

Commonplace land of our love, vulgar and crass and 

provincial. 
You of the tin-pan yawp and the jerry-built slums and 

the bill-boards, — 
What wonders, what beauties are yours, were our senses 

but fresh to perceive them! 



OVER-TONES 

Poet, lift up your voice! 

Not alone to yourself do you owe it 

To spend to the full in the worship of beauty 

Your body and spirit and mind; 

You owe it to legions of mute, inglorious singers, — 

Singers you never behold, but who join you in song 

By grace of the mystical converse 

That quickens the fronds of your mind 

In the soundless waves of the songs of the souls of men. 

Torn whence — 

All arts must perish like sea-flowers cast on the shore. 

For, enlarging, enriching each note of the voice 
That brings you the honor which brightens your name, 
Ring over-tones not of your making, — 
Unheard by the conscious ear. 

But thrillingly plain to the all-perceiving unconscious. 
Round and mellow they ring, sonorous with pleasure, 
Like hunting-horns heard far 

[41] 



OVER-TONES 

Over the floor of a dawn-flushed lake, 

Or vibrant with passion, 

Bubbling with laughter, 

Poignant and shudderingly sweet with the stirrings of 

love, 
Or muffled by pain; 
Over-tones richly enveined with the gold of unsatisfied 

longing, 
Strong as the prayer of the savior who dies for his friend, 
Pure as the cry of the soul when a rending of veils 
Discloses the heavenly city. 



THE SILENT SINGERS 

(With Margaret Widdemer Schauffler) 

Fameless and unfulfilled 

Lie prisoned your silent throng. 

Far from the proud who build 
Tower, statue and song: 

Great souls destined to lie 

Shackled by circumstance, 
Walled from your rightful sky. 

From your own stars' glance. 

O Miltons of letterless dream, 

Rembrandts with pictures undrawn, 

Bachs who may echo no theme 
From the choirs of the dawn; 

Hail! craftsman and driver and drudge. 

Mariner, sower of grain. 
Whose mute souls cry to your Judge 

And seem crying in vain: 
[43] 



THE SILENT SINGERS 

Yet are you building, though still 

You dream that your lives are naught, 

For the thoughts of your strong souls thrill 
Through the builders' thought. 

And back of the singing pen 
And back of the building hand 

Are the urging souls of the men 
Of your f ameless band ! 



Ill 

CONFLICT 



WORLDS AT WAR 

In the uproar and stench 

Of a Verdun trench — 

The tortured bed of the great war's birth — 

I slept, and dreamed this vision of Earth: 

Out of the bosom of Europe the slaughter had spread 
Till the waves of the distant Yang-tze-kiang flowed red; 
Red were Columbia, Amazon, Ganges, Nile; 
Red were the uttermost peak and the outermost isle. 
No part of the planet, from shore to remotest shore, 
But agonized now in the bestial clutch of war. 
From every ocean, from every tribe and state, 
Rose up to the stars the fetid odor of hate. 

Then I saw in my dream how the sun was suddenly 

veiled 
By the wings of a monstrous, ghoulish fleet of the air, — 
Unhuman ships from another world, that hailed 
From none knew where; 

[47] 



WORLDS AT WAR 

Fantastic hulls that never had birth 
In the dreams of the boldest brain of Earth. 
Downward in terrible power they came, 
Armored with plates of smouldering flame. 
Armed with might in the smithies of night. 
Guided by beings merciless, wise. 
Veterans drilled in the outer skies. 

Now a greenish ray from the nethermost vessel shot. 
Earthward it turned, judicial, unflickering, slow. 
Till it looked on a fortress beset by hosts of the foe. 
One glance of its eye, and — fortress and foe were not ! 

Then something gave way in my brain 
With a fierce, revealing pain; 
And I knew that, across the abysms of air, 
After seons of human imaginings. 
Creatures from some dread otherwhere 
Had launched on miraculous wings 
To abolish the near and the far. 
I knew that beings from some strange star, 
Hitherto out of the reach of our ken, 
With resolute pinions unfurled. 
And weapons undreamed till then, 

[ 48 ] 



WORLDS AT WAR 

Downward had swooped to erase 
From the otherwise lovely face 
Of the flower of a neighboring world. 
Those who to their minds were but poisonous vermin — 
men! 

I saw all human eyes 

In terror fixed on the skies. 

And I felt how one thought, like a signal, ran 

Through the trenches of Earth from man to man, 

Then leaped from the mire and forth 

To the east and the west, to the south and the north. 

Where the human enemies lay; 

And it met with this self-same thought half-way; 

''Let there he "peace! 

We are faced by a common foe; let the wars of the earth- 
born cease! 

Shall brother and brother fight with the day of doom in 
sight f' 

Mute thought became vocal then 
In the cry of a world distraught: 
''Peace among men!" 

[ 49 ] 



WORLDS AT WAR 

And, hard on the heels of thought, 

From their trenches poured the embattled folk of 

the world, 
With battle-flags furled, 
And, with cries of good- will. 
Sprang forth to embrace, 
Those whom, the moment before, in that charnel- 

like place. 
They had lusted to kill. 

And I felt the great thrill 

Of the throe 

Of an earth 

In re-birth. 

That moment while hand sought hand 

Across the wires of every No-Man's land, — 

While foe took foe to his heart. 

And, never to part. 

Turned, shoulder by shoulder to parry the blow 

Of the grim Earth-foe. 

Then first, since the bulk of the dripping sphere 
Heaved shuddering out of the slime 
Of chaos and night and old time, 

[50] 



WORLDS AT WAR 

Were the hearts of all earth-men strung 
In harmony one with the other. 
Then faded and vanished the last frontier 
Of hate, when the soul's universal tongue 
Uttered the great word: "Brother!" 

There, in that infinite spark of time, 

Despite the ghoul-fleets veiling the sky, 

Was my heart lifted high; 

For I heard a mighty resurgent chime. 

And I knew Earth's death-in-hfe was done, 

And I saw from its grave-like trench, humanity 

climb 
Into the light of a common sun. 

Out of that dream I awoke. 
On the borders of night, serenely far, 
Unmenacing glimmered the evening star. 
No ghoulish air-fleets blotted the blue. 
The dew of the dusk was sweet; 
But the voice of an enemy mortar spoke. 
And my comrade fell at my feet 
With his skull split through. . . . 

[ 51 ] 



WORLDS AT WAR 

Then in my soul I prayed 
To the wise All-Father, and said : 
**God, if no merciful plan 
May reconcile man to man. 
Then raise thine omnipotent arm; 
Blacken our skies with the woe 
Of some all-menacing harm; 
That, awed by a common foe 
And a common fate. 
Our hearts may shatter the gate 
From the narrower self, and advance to unity 
dedicate." 

Then shall our triumph ring 

Whether we stand or fall; 

For the wreck of the flesh is a paltry thing, 

But love is all in all. 



EARTH'S EASTER 

MCMXVI 

Earth has gone up from its Gethsemane, 

And now on Golgotha is crucified; 

The spear is twisted in the tortured side; 
The thorny crown still works its cruelty. 
Hark! while the victim suffers on the tree, 

There sound through starry spaces, far and wide. 

Such words as in the last despair are cried: 
"My God! my God! Thou hast forsaken me!" 

But when earth's members from the cross are drawn, 

And all we love into the grave is gone. 

This hope shall be a spark within the gloom: 

That, in the glow of some stupendous dawn. 
We may go forth to find, where lilies bloom, 
Two angels bright before an empty tomb. 



[53] 



MEUSE-ARGONNE LYRICS 
I 

FEAR OF FEAR 

Only one thing I feared. 

And it was this : 
That when the day appeared 

My soul might miss 
That scorn of death and anguish whence 
It drew its quiet confidence. 

I minded nothing now 

But the misgiving 
That I might grow, somehow. 

Too bent on Hving. 
I feared my confidence might fail 
When gas and shrapnel told their tale. 

Daily that shameful doubt 

Made my cheek blench 
Until the Hun wiped out 

Our starting trench. 
[54 ] 



MEUSE-ARGONNE LYRICS 

Then, in the hell of shell and shot, 
I knew the fear of fear was not. 

n 

BEST O' LUCK 

Over the top we swarmed. 

Solid as slush was the air with the stuff their guns 
sent by; 
With shrapnel, gas, bullet and bomb we were handily 
warmed. 
But a jubilant man was I. 

Gone was my fear of fear; 

Come were the steadfast and tried to help on the 
dubious way; 
The souls of the living and dead, the loyal and dear, 

Marched with my soul that day. 

One of them shouldered my pack; 

One pointed his hand at a bough where a sniper was 
making too free; 
And when I grew thirsty, another, divining my lack, 
Held wine out to me. 

[55] 



MEUSE-ARGONNE LYRICS 

Around me they closed in a crowd. 

They bore me along with a rush that it seemed no 
weapon might stop; 
The confident souls that I loved bore my flesh through 
the fight like a cloud 
The day I went over the top. 



in 

THE LOOK IN THEIR EYES 

Youthful and buoyant and blithe they went into 
battle, 
Fresh as Olympian athletes strung for the prize; 
Aged and broken and done they dragged from the 
victory, 
All with that look, that terrible look in their eyes. 

Plainly I saw in their eyes the plunge of the bayonet, 

Plainly the crater's fresh red, and the faint, over-wise 
Smile on a comrade's cold lips and his blackening body 
Were mirrored once more by the terrible look in their 
eyes. 

[56] 



MEUSE-ARGONNE LYRICS 

Never again shall they greet, with youth's poignant 
pleasure, 
Forests or tremulous dawns or the round moon's rise. 
Or beauty or grandeur or love or the glory of heaven 
Who return with the mark of the knowledge of hell in 
their eyes. 

IV 

DELIRIUM ? 

I HAVE heard wise men say 

That all the armies wasting earth to-day 

Are but the meager counterparts 

Of those invisible hosts of Day and Night 

Whose spirit- warfare's unimagined arts 

Throughout high Heaven, above man's lesser fight. 

Sweep their relentless way. 

Of what avail to win our victory. 
To cleanse this home of Earth 
Where, at the next re-birth. 
Our tenancy will soon have ceased, — 
If the pure Heaven where we shall ever be 
Lies ravished by the Beast.^^ 

[57] 



MEUSE-ARGONNE LYRICS 

Then, comrades, while we burrow in the earth, 

Or charge with earthly blade 

Across the No-Man's hell that man has made, 

On towards the glimmering dawn of freedom's birth, 

Forget we not to swing our spirit's sword 

Within the ranks above that battle for the Lord! 



HIT 

A CRACK and a zip ! 

I went to the ground 

As if my hip 

Had been caught in the path of a leaden bat 

Which a demon batsman was whirling around 

In the throes of some inter-stellar game. 

I struggled to rise, but my side was aflame; 

And I felt ashamed I had come to that. 

My first thought was that it could not be 

Me they had hit, — who was going scot free — 

Mel 

My next thought carried me back with a whirr 
To a distant place and a distant day, 

[58] 



MEUSE-ARGONNE LYRICS 

And sharply showed me an old dead-beat, 

Pinned so flat that he could not stir, 

Under a trolley in lower Broadway, 

With one foot off, and his face in the street; — 

A shameful way for a man to lie. 

For one of our human clan to die. 

Flat in the mud where he could n't writhe free ! 

And the same 

Old shame 

I had felt for him 

And his severed limb, 

Rose for myself in me; — 

Shame for my plight as if I were 

Pinioned there like a fox in a trap, 

Or a felon strapped to the murderer's chair. 

Blind in the cap. 

But, after that 

Emotional riot 

Had simmered to quiet — 

Though the German bird 

In the tree, who had shot me, 

Kept trying to pot me, 

[59] 



MEUSE-ARGONNE LYRICS 

And bullets spat 

In the ground 

All around, — 

I pledge you my word: 

Not another emotion 

For months on end 

Did fortune allot me, — 

Not even a feeling of decent devotion 

To that true friend 

Who had crawled to my side 

And dragged me to cover. 

Like a pierced balloon, emotion went down. 

No more could I glow like a friend or a lover. 

The demons and gods I had cherished: 

Compassion, hope, envy and pride, 

Faith, reverence, thirst for renown, 

Hate, loyalty, — all 

The passions that make the heart wide. 

The passions that make the heart small, — 

Had been hit, every one. 

By that sniper's gun, 

And had perished. 

[60] 



MEUSE-ARGONNE LYRICS 

When the war was done 

I could scarcely rejoice 

Or savor the sweets 

Of the reveling, joy-drunk Paris streets. 

I could barely find voice to curse at the Hun. 

Emotion was dead. 

Nor could I feel any jubilant thread 
Strung white-hot from my heart to my head 
When I waited on deck that dazzling day 
And the crowded transport swung up the bay, 
And we startled the streets of the milky way 
As we cheered the girl with the silver torch 
Who lights the path to America's porch. 

Thus I lived like one in a trance, 
Drawing dull breath 
In a living death. 

Until one day in a well-loved town, 
As I stood in my old college hall again 
And saw the seniors in cap and gown. 
Bronzed young veterans back from France, 
Sightless, some, or with empty sleeve, 

[61] 



MEUSE-ARGONNE LYRICS 

Back once more 

With laurels from No-Man's Land, to weave 
In the laurel crown of the Mother of Men, — 
Come out of horrors they could not tell 
To offer their Mother a new renown 
And to say "Farewell!" — 
Gilding her name with a fresh romance 
Snatched out of hell; — 

Then the organ spoke and, the young men sang 
^^The Son of God goes jorth to war.'' 
Poignant and deep through the vaulting rang — 
Filled with the youth of that ** chosen band": — 
Who follows in His train?" 



tt 



Then, — why, I shall never understand — 
Some note borne on that strong refrain 
Paid to my heart its long arrears; 
Red dawn flooded my frozen brain; 
And hot in my eyes lay the gift of tears. 



THE DAY OF A THOUSAND DEATHS 

Calamity loomed in the way; 

My lips went suddenly grey. 

For his sword was long 

And his armor strong. 

*'No sword nor armor are mine," I said, 

**I am but as the dead!" 

But a thousand deaths I died that day 

As waiting Calamity's blow I lay. 

Calamity came and lifted my head. 
**I am no coward," he proudly said, 
**That would slink to attack 
A defenseless back ! 
I am not Worry, the cur whose bark 
Slays fools in the dark. 
Not so; I fight as a well-born knight; 
Nor shall you fail of the chivalrous right 
To equal weapons and equal mail"; 
When, lo ! my body was girt in steel 
And a blade in my hand was bright. 
[63] 



THE DAY OF A THOUSAND DEATHS 

Then did I feel 

A tenfold might. 

With a tenfold zeal 

Then did I fight. 

Then did I fall 

With courage alight. 

Deep and grievous my wounds were, all; 

But none in the back, and fatal, none. 

Already my confident flesh had begun. 

As the clean-cutting steel withdrew, to heal. 

And the pain was as naught to the pain I had 

felt that day 
When blindly awaiting Calamity's blow I lay. 



BEFORE THE DELUGE 

Whispers of hoarse, far thunder; 

The splash of a drop here and there; 
Faces upturned in mild wonder 

Whether the day will turn fair: 
• ••••••• 

Lord of flood, famine and plunder — 
Speak! are we late, too late 
In this dusk of our weal 
To lay us the keel 
Of the ark of a deathless state? 

When the beaches of foam crawl higher, 

And we climb through the murk and the roar. 
When the cries of spent swimmers draw nigher. 

And our mountain-top holds us no more; 
Then, Wielder of deluge and fire. 
Shall we cry to Thee late, too late, 
O Lord of our weal. 
To lay us the keel 
Of the ark of a death-doomed state? 
[65] 



THE CRUCIBLE 

Turning aside from her golden foes 
And her red, whose ranks her ranks oppose, 
Flushed with the promise of happier things. 
Fronting the future, America sings: 

** Chemist of morrows am I, 

Here in my crucible lie 

Stuffs of the proudest worth 

Fused with the bloom of a new-found earth. 

" Oh, rare is the stuff of creation that waits re-birth 
At the touch of my quickening art! 
These atoms were warmed in Tolstoy's heart, — 
These, in the chalice of Shakespeare's brain; 
These drops, behold! once ebbed from the cheek 
Of the loved apostle when Heaven's smile 
Gilded the main 

And lit the hushed beach of Patmos Isle. 
To the mind of Beethoven this seed is heir; 

[66] 



THE CRUCIBLE 

Here 's blood that danced in the ageless Greek 
When his spirit was blithe 
At the Parthenon's brow, as he filleted there 
Sculptures whose adamant youth should dull the 

implacable scythe. 
Such drops to my crucible flow 
From the veins of time's deathless men; 
And, what blood has accomplished, lo ! 
Blood shall accomplish again. 

** Nay, in my crucible's glow 
Shall it accomplish yet more; 
Beauty and strength it shall know, 
Fairer, more potent, than bore 
Fire to its current before : — 
Beauty of cavern and island 
New to the ancient world; 
Grandeur of prairie and canyon and highland, 
Glory of floods from the glacial sky-land 
Suddenly down to the summer hurled. 
And splendors unseen it shall know, 
Of hope for democracy's way. 
Of faith in unity's powers, 

[67] 



THE CRUCIBLE 

Of trust that out of these calyx hours 
Shall blossom the perfect day. 

** Lo! here to my hand are the seeds of the monarchs 

of time; 
Lo ! here to my hand, new wonders of earth and mere, 
And a far-eyed faith in freedom's millennial year. 
Now each, as I pair it with other in fusing rhyme. 
Shall utter a strain attuned to the Pleiades' song, — 
A strain for the men of loftier morrows to hear. 
On purer heights of the soul, in a happier throng. 

" With the seed of the bards who were Britain's boast 
Shall I mingle the lure of my Georgian coast? 

"Oh, Scottish heather 
And English broom 
And the rich, rank Irish bog; 
Halcyon weather 
For weeks together, 
The north's wet gloom 
And the London fog — 
All have offered the poet room 

[08] 



THE CRUCIBLE 

To build his saga, to court his dream 

In the garret's chill, 

On the star-roofed hill, 

In the smudge of the hovel's peaty smoke. 

Or to wander afoot in the path of the gleam 

And visit the fairy folk. 

" But what of the poems that wait such as he 

Where my glamorous marshes go down to the sea? 

Here is the poet's own place. 

Where the salt creeks interlace. 

Closed by the cloisters of vine and of oak 

That chrismed the young bard's mouth 

Whose spirit was clear to divine. 

Whose flute was sweet to evoke 

The notes, pure, crystalline. 

That opened the song of my South? 

'' O musical souls from the northern land. 
Who fled from your ancient mother 
Foreboding what madness her portion would be 
Who should rise, one day, to crush liberty 

[69] 



THE CRUCIBLE 

And to separate brother from brother; — 

You have been faithful to me : — 

Shall I fuse you with breath from the peaks that 

stand 
Gazing down on the foam of my sunset strand? 

** When the gods were young, 

And earth's matins were rung. 

Full rudely young Siegfried's hunting-horn, 

Staggered the toy Teutonic hills. 

It were fitter, far, had his guiding Norn 

Shewn him a more heroic bourne, — 

Led the hero where yet there thrills 

Through groves of a thousand Yggdrasils 

The glow of the first California morn. 

" And to-morrow, where icy Sierran towers 
Chime my western Walhalla's hours. 
Shall a greater than him of the Nibelung story 
In music eternize my cycles of glory .^^ 
Shall flame to his singing a magic pyre 
On deep-cleft Yosemite's mad, sheer verge? 
Shall drift to him, over the undulant surge 

[70] 



THE CRUCIBLE 

Of the cataract-giants' tempestuous choir, 
Rampings and rumblings of dragon ire. 
The laugh of the daughters of dancing waters, 
A swooping of Valkyrs, a sunset dirge 
At the bier of a dusk- wrapped demiurge? 

" Plain heroes and homespun saviors of old. 
With the blood of your deep-hidden hearts of 

gold 
Shall I mingle the soul of a land like you? — 
A land that can hide 
The solemn pride 

Of earth-heavens under its grass's blue? 
And with these shall I mix the bold airs that 

democracy best 
Sings in the brotherly land where East meets 

West? 

" Far beneath furrow and wold, 
Stygian river and hill 
Hid in the breast of Kentucky, unfold 
To the eye that is keen and the steadfast 
will. 

[ 71 ] 



THE CRUCIBLE 

There is a city of wide-domed halls, 

Colored and carved; the crusted walls 

Bear frescoes flushed with the alpenglow, 

Bear statues kin to the sculpture agleam 

In the halls of the blessed when sculptors dream. 

A marble temple is there 

Whose white-robed pinnacles seem 

Like choristers voicing a strain too rare 

For the grosser ears of the world to share; 

While the little, blind waterfall's tremulous 

flow. 
As it cheers the dim passage to Lethe's stream. 
Startles the still oratorio. 

** Great-heart Kentucky, whose common crust 
Holds for my children such splendors in trust. 
Ere your sun be set 
Shall you beget 

Some child of as deep-hearted likeness to you 
As ever the land of Jeanne d'Arc knew? 
Or, in caverns of sleep 
As wild and deep 

As the path of a meteor's earthward leap, 

[ 72 ] 



THE CRUCIBLE 

Shall you rouse from his inter- vital rest 

Some Charlemagne of the waiting West? 

Aye, Kentucky ! And this were best : 

That you fare but onward as you began 

When you rocked on your gaunt and hollow breast 

The deepest-hearted American ! " 

But sudden remembrance darkens the eyes 
Of America now, and her gladness dies. 
Before and behind her a menacing foe 
She beholds, and her singing falls sad and low: 

**Alas! that visions like these 

Fill not with the urge of creation 

A happy, united nation. 

Such are the dreams of peace; — 

But the peace that was won in France 

By the might of our swift advance 

Proves but the dream of a day. 

Like mist has it melted away. 

My sons now gird them anew to fight 

The armies of foes more dread. 

Who, under banners of gold and of red. 

Seek for my devastation. 

[ 73 1 



THE CRUCIBLE 

" The golden enemy, day and night, 

With jeweled gyves to manacle me, 

And a diamond halter for Liberty, 

Makes ready my van to attack. 

Masking his bivouac 

Where the smoke-shot, blinding glare of the mills 

Throbs on the hideous Homestead hills, 

And fathers at thirty are broken and grey. 

And widows are minted every day; 

Where tiny hands flash in a Southern loom 

To finish a shroud for a hastening tomb; 

And where, in the roots of the thick-branched town, 

The pale slum-dwellers are trodden down 

Like worms in the fetid dark 

By the heel of the oligarch. 

In many such place 

Is fashioned a race 

Blinder of soul, more noisome of breath, 

Allied more desperately with death 

Than old-world Cenci or bloody Macbeth, 

" Behold, as I turn my face. 
Behind me swarms the red foe. 

[74] 



THE CRUCIBLE 

His dim eyes, how should they know 
From a foe to distinguish a friend? 
Now what if my rear-guard fail. 
And his blinded onset prevail? 
Shall the marbles in Learning's hall 
To the crash of his bludgeon bend? 
From Beauty's time-sanctified wall 
Shall his hand the loved tapestries rend? — 
Aye! for he only knows that knowledge gave 
Masters of men the power to make him a slave; 
And he only knows that beauty of form and of hue 
Lily-like out of the mire of his slavery grew. 
So, like a banner, the red ranks raise 
This cry to the blast of the Marseillaise: 
^Into the bottomless pit he hurled 
Learning, the perfumed and Culture, the 

curled! 
Hand, not head, shall master the world T 

" Thus, Janus-faced to a double foe, 
How shall my phalanx the issue foreknow? 
But, doubtful however the end may be, 
Though sway the promise of victory 

[75 ] 



THE CRUCIBLE 

Hither and yon on fate's knees unsure, 
Foeman, to this one word give ear: 

Neither gilded ranks nor red do I fear. 

Unlimher your golden guns; 

Your murderous weapons wprear; 

Honor at least is secure; 

I have begotten me sons! 

" I have stilled from the blood of the ages 

An ichor to flow in their veins. 

I have reared them on Sitka moraines, 

Where valiant Niagara rages. 

And Erie and Huron rest; 

Where the portals of gold and of sand 

Greet pilgrims from every land. 

In forest and vision-filled plain, 

By beauty-filmed chasm and crest, 

I have mothered a brood which presages 

That might and more might they shall gain, 

The fiercer the battle-fire rain. 

Till they win them eternity's wages 

Who strive for my unity, blest. 

[76] 



THE CRUCIBLE 

" Already are mirrored stern joys 

In eyes that understand 

What struggles their valor await. 

Already my gallant boys — 

Like the farmers of Lexington's band, 

Or the lads of the grim Argonne 

Who, circled by death, drove on — 

Catch up the weapon at hand, — 

Bludgeon or bomb or knife — 

And, vowing to win me a lofty fate. 

Form for the hazard of death or life. 

" Warded by legions like these, never shall I despair 
Though rout be rolled upon rout and the issue desperate 

seem. 
For, crushed, I care not how often, to earth, they shall 

rally and dare 
Charge yet again in the van till victory crown them 

there. 
And more than the victor's bay shall they bear to my 

crucible's glow — 
The might of the struggle of struggles into its heart shall 

flow; 

[ 77 ] 



THE CRUCIBLE 

Out of its heart shall rise the strong new race of my 

dream, 
Never to stay the advance till the folds of my standard 

gleam 
On loftier heights of the soul, in a purer, more quicken- 
ing air 
Than ever the years have known. There the monarch 

of singers shall raise 
To the lines of the Milton of morrows, the chords of my 

psean of praise; 
The heart of Kentucky shall hear me, — Lincoln's line 

shall increase, — 
And Homestead hills shall rear me the Bonaparte of 

peace." 



IV 
OTHER POEMS 



PARADISE REVISED 

Playing hymn-tunes day and night 

On a harp, may be all right 

For the grown-ups; but for me 

I do wish that Heaven could be 

Sort o' like a circus, run 

So a kid could have some fun! 

There I 'd not play harps, but horns 
When I chased the unicorns: 
Magic tubes with pistons greasy. 
Slides that pushed and pulled out easy, 
Cylinders of snaky brass 
Where the fingers like to fuss, 
Polished like a looking-glass, 
Ending in a blunderbuss. 

I would ride a horse of steel 
Wound up with a ratchet-wheel. 
Every beast I 'd put to rout 
Like the man I read about. 
[81] 



PARADISE REVISED 

I would singe the leopard's hair. 
Stalk the vampire and the adder, 
Drive the werewolf from his lair, 
Make the mad gorilla madder. 
Needle-guns my work would do; 
But, if beasts got closer to, 
I would pierce 'em to the marrow 
With a barbed and poisoned arrow, 
Or I 'd whack 'em on the skull 
Till my scimiter was dull. 

If these weapons did n't work. 
With a kris or bowie-knife. 
Poniard, assegai or dirk 
I would make 'em beg for life; 
Spare 'em, though, if they'd be good 
And guard me from what haunts the wood 
From those creepy, shuddery sights 
That come 'round a fellow nights : 
Imps that squeak and trolls that prowl. 
Ghouls, the slimy devil-fowl. 
Headless goblins with lassoes. 
Scarlet witches worse than those, 
[ 82] 



PARADISE REVISED 

Flying dragon-fish that bellow 
So as most to scare a fellow. . . . 

There, as nearly as I could, 

I would live like Robin Hood, 

Taking down the mean and haughty, 

Getting plunder from the naughty 

To reward all honest men 

Who should seek my outlaw's den. 

When I 'd wearied of these pleasures 
I 'd go hunt for hidden treasures, — 
In no ordinary way: 
Pirates' luggers I'd waylay; 
Board 'em from my sinking dory, 
Wade through decks of gore and glory. 
Drive the fiends, with blazing matchlock, 
Down below, and snap the hatch-lock. 

Next, I 'd scud beneath the sky-land, 
Sight the hills of Treasure Island, 
Prowl and peer and prod and prise. 
Till there burst upon my eyes 
[83] 



PARADISE REVISED 

Just the proper pirates' freight: 
Gold doubloons and pieces of eight 1 

Then — the very best of all — 
Suddenly a stranger tall 
Would appear, and I 'd forget 
That we had n't ever met. 
And with waving cap I'd greet him, 
(Turning from the plunder yellow) 
And I'd hurry hard to meet him, 
For he 'd be the very fellow 
Who, I think, invented fun — 
Robert Louis Stevenson. 



LIMBS OF THE FOREST 

Contours of milady's stocking, 
Why are you so very shocking 

In the city? — 
Though you gladden stream and wood 
With luxuriant womanhood. 
Giving not the least offenses 
Even to a Grundy's senses. 

What a pity 
That your symphony, in town. 
Must be muffled by a gown! 

And, milady's knickerbocker. 
Why are you a shilling shocker 

In the city? 
Though the forest finds your limbs 
Decorous as a book of hymns, — 
Finds your eloquence of line 
Close akin to the divine? 

What a pity 
Such a treat for poetry-lovers 
Should be closed within cloth covers! 
[85] 



FOR THE GUEST-BOOK OF "THE CABIN" 
SUTTON'S ISLAND 

(1910) 

The glamour of Rothenburg towers, 
Its tankards and quaint parasols. 
The call of far Carcassonne hours, 
And droll little Nuremberg dolls, 

The charm of Tyrolean chisels, 

Cool breaths from the land of the Finn, 

Vesuvian sparkles and sizzles, 

The stirring of shadows within 

Lore-laden Ukrainian valleys, 

The wheel of an old Hesperus, 

Faint fragrance from lonely Swiss chalets: — 

You bring these, dear Cabin, to us. 

You add hearty welcome and laughter, 
Talk, frolic or silence at need, 
[86] 



FOR THE GUEST-BOOK OF THE CABIN 

And a fare to tempt gods, — even after 
Their meals of ambrosia and mead. 



From Norway you bring us the mountains. 
The red, craggy coast-Hne from Wales, 
And Florida's youth-giving fountains, 
And the soft, dreamy, delicate veils 

Of Mediterranean distance, — 

Have a care, little paradise, lest 

You convince all your guests with insistence, 

They've docked at the isles of the blest! 



HAPPY MARRIAGE 

Mistress Joy is at your side 
Waiting to become a bride. 

Soft ! Restrain your jubilation. 
That ripe mouth may not be kissed 
Till you stand examination; 
Mistress Joy 's a eugenist. 

Is your crony Moderation? 
Do your senses say you sooth.^^ 
Are your veins the kind that tingle? 
Is your soul awake in truth? 

If these traits in you commingle 
Joy no more shall leave you single. 



[88] 



TO SLEEP 

Hide me from echoes of turbulent streets; 

Of whitening breakers that gather and pour 

Crashing down on a crag-girt shore; 
Of the bugle that brays and the drum that beats 
To desperate charges and mad retreats; 

Of mills where clangorous anvils roar. 

And, loud to the pallid furnace door. 
The bubbling steel God's wrath repeats. 

But quiet me, rather, on your smooth breast. 
Sister Sleep, — and wrap me up 

With your warm, spiced veil, in a calm profound 
As his who sinks to a well-earned rest. 
Kissing the rim of the infinite cup, 
Shadowed by love, by honor crowned. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

7/ this my pen 

Has ever seemed to move aright 

And faithfully indite 

Words that have come from bournes beyond my ken, 

Give no more praise to me 

Than should his portion be 

Whose fingers, with a wondering delight, 

Move among viol-strings 

And seek to give again 

The fruits of greater minds' imaginings, — 

Music that is the dower of all men. 

For I am only he 
Who seeks again to give. 
Without initiative. 

The melodies that, far within his brain. 
With joy that is half pain, 
Sound echoed from the rapturous, distant song 
Of festivals that to all time belong, 

[91] 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

Alas! my halting pen 

Never may purely give that song again. 

Alas! the clownish hand 

Whose fingers hover ^ 

Fretting the string. 

But powerless to recover 

From music's wonderland 

More than this harsher remnant-thing. 

From what, — compact of Heaven's own dew and light 

And murmurs of the bright. 

The vast, harmonious, eternal main, — 

The Lord of beauty set within this brain 

For this my hand to echo how it can. 

Crudely translating into coarser tone. 

To sound above life's roar to every man. 

Music no man may claim as his alone. 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



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